This high adventure, in loosely metered heroic couplets, follows Abdallah Jones on his quest to capture the ball of disappearing-dust from the mad Sorcerer and stop the destruction of the world. He has been given the task by his Sufi shaykh, which takes him to the Sorcerer's castle, where he meets Marbug the elf, Neptune, the King of the Jinn, and a collection of sweet and evilly dangerous characters along the way with more cliff-hangers and near-deaths than anyone but Abdallah should have to endure - and finally to Madina, the city of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of God be upon...

LOVE IS A LETTER BURNING IN A HIGH WIND is a chronicle in sequential open field poems of a second visit to Turkey (the first recorded in formal ghazals), and to the glorious atmospheres of Sufi Master Mevlana Rumi and his gnostic teacher, Shams. Included are three extended narrative poems in the thematic style of Rumi's Masnawi, undertaken with no plot or source other than spontaneous inspiration. characterized by talking animals and "decapitated" watermelons. Ecstatic lyricism and sweet apprehension the impulse and goal to glorify and praise this swift life and its Originator and Sustainer:...

THE FLAME OF TRANSFORMATION TURNS TO LIGHT is a book of poems in traditional ghazal form, the first half begun in Turkey, companion volume to "open form" poems written at a later visit, published in 2006 as Love is a Letter Burning in a High Wind (The Ecstatic Exchange). Visiting the epiphany-inducing tombs of Mevlana Rumi and his spiritual companion Shems in Konya, their baraka bathing the journey, the grave of Turkey's great native Sufi poet, Yunus Emre, and traveling through a land of such subtle spirituality, these poems chronicle an imagistic diary through both interior and exterior...

UNDERWATER GALAXIES is a book of poems in the floating genres of open inspiration and Rumiesque narrative, taking a journey to Morocco, visiting Marrakech, being visited by William Blake in vision. golden bees, yellow roses. the long and winding road from the divine affirmation of our birth to the double affirmation of death and its afterlife, all its twists and turns made sweeter by serious (and often humorous) imaginal utterance.

THE MUSIC SPACE, written in 2001, is a series of poems most acutely attuned to the sounds of our universe, composed for the most part while traveling back and forth to New York, unexpectedly ending with the world-transforming events of 9/11, completing in an apocalyptic way an unforeseen circle. This is the music space where music is most difficult this place of joy and horror. I think the music of the spheres can be heard in this space. And the original sound is the sound of God alone audible to Himself and we are the humming elements of that sound.

COATTAILS OF THE SAINT - is a collection of poems which chase after the coattails of sanctity, in this world with its "meanings set up as images" (a Sufi definition of what we take around us as reality), and those souls living among us right now and forever who have had bestowed upon them that dimension of sanctity which sets them apart while making them at the same time true human beings. Imagination has given these poems a "saintly" thread, with no particular saint in any traditional pantheon meant, but rather that essence of simple sainthood of which we are all (God willing) capable.

Poetic inspiration continues to be a mystery to me, but I am its deep advocate, and hold to its irrational and shady acreage like a greedy real estate developer gazing out over the possibilities (a ramshackle hut here, a barn there, a castle with a lake yonder.). Is it angels, djinn, my black cat curled at the bottom of my bed while I'm hot in composition mode? My "unconscious," "God Consciousness?" (my fervent prayer).

This may be my most personal book, as I wrote this collection of poems as an attempt to definitively and honestly connect in a deep way with Farid, my teenage stepson. "Ah, since you're not my/ natural son, you can be my/ supernatural son No actual genes of mine// swim in your blood, your flesh doesn't/ resemble mine, though since I've been your/ dad from the time you were two, we now have a/ definite// family resemblance, leaping over/ genetic fact like some sleek green grasshopper of/ supernatural light."

THE FIRE EATER'S LUNCHBREAK: What does happen when we stop swallowing the flame, whatever it might be? This world, our own drudgery, our passions, low or high, that locus of our experience we call "I" - and take a break? There's a Sufi text by Shaykh ibn 'Ata Illah whose title I've always loved: "The Giving Up of the Management of Your Affairs." Neat trick But somehow that's also the key to the present title, and God willing to something of the poems this book contains. Poem: His High Command/and an ant's vibrating antenna//The horrors of war/and a newborn's uncurling fingers//Flash...

IN THE REALM OF NEITHER: I had a dream just before waking of a shelf filled with books, and I was reading the titles when a spotlight hit the spine of one book that also seemed to protrude from the others and be coming out of the shelf toward me. On it were the words "In the Realm of Neither" that remained vivid and unforgettable upon waking... (poem) If all the wood in the world were to sing/and every rose gave a political speech/and every cloud took pity on its neighbor/and every stone composed an epic poem about/being a stone and each of us saw God direct with our/own eyes in naked...